Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

Less than an hour later I was sitting in Steven Wicks’s office at Prehistoric Pets, watching him count the mouth scales of the rattlesnake on his desk. The animal was still moving, slowly and without progress, like in a dream. Wicks shook his head very slowly, which I took as a criticism of my specimen collection technique. He had a book on rattlesnakes open in front of him. When he was done he looked up at me.

“ Crotalus horridus ” he said. “Timber rattler.”

Back at the apartment I checked my computer, suspecting that The Horridus wouldn’t have contacted me again either. Right again. After all, he’d been busy. Abducting girls. Supplying evidence that damned the very cop who was after him the hardest.

Question: did he know who Mal was? How? If so, was he playing a game with me, or did he believe that Terry Naughton was a bad cop with a bad habit?

Either way, I had to get him to answer me. He was my savior. So I left a plaintive note for him on the bulletin board:

I. R. — Need some real-time chatter to get to the heart of this matter. Free adult seeking to exercise constitutional rights. Need directions to dream girl. Need to go to live feed. Aforementioned budget generous within reason. Reconsider loyal Mal.

“Going live” or “going to live feed” is pedo parlance for “acquiring” the object of desire in the flesh. Not the picture. Not the video. Not the film.

The actual live girl. It’s risky and expensive. And I’d never done it before.

Half an hour later I met Johnny Escobedo at Fontana, a restaurant down in the Santa Ana barrio, not far from the county buildings. He had tried to turn me down, but I was all over him. I told him I had new evidence on The Horridus and Stefanic — and that was enough. That’s one of the things I love about Johnny: he’ll do almost anything on earth to bust a creep.

He slipped through the screen door and into the booth, looking more like a cartel enforcer than a cop: his usual jeans and white T-shirt, cowboy boots and silk windbreaker. The windbreaker had shrunken skulls embroidered across the shoulders. He stared at me from behind his sunglasses for a silent moment, then took them off and smiled.

“You’re looking good, boss.”

“If I was really your boss, you’d be wearing a coat and tie. You’re working crimes against youth, you know. You’re supposed to look squeaky and square, like a cop you could trust”

“Well then, I guess you never really were my boss, boss.”

“I’ll tell you, Johnny, I intend to be again someday.”

“Ishmael’s so slow about everything, it’s a wonder he gets his teeth brushed before work. You gotta run each and every thing past him before he’ll cut you loose. He watches us like we’re children. He doesn’t have any urgency, no speed at all. Like working for a turtle.”

We ordered two coffees, a basket of chips and salsa.

“Where are you on Grantley, Vonn and Webb and Webster?” I demanded.

He eyed me. “I thought I was getting the dope here.”

“You’re getting the dope.” I pulled the pillowcase from my jacket pocket and set it on the table. Johnny looked at the little bloodstain on it, then at me. “But I need some first.”

“Grantley’s a bust so far — no homes with guest units bought, sold or leased by a Grantley in the last two years, in any of the three counties. There’s two Eugene Vonns in Orange County — father-son, both clean. Junior is twelve. No Eugene or Gene Grantley anywhere. There are eighteen Eugene Webbs in the three counties, and we’ve checked out all but four. We’ve got seven Eugene Websters and two Gene Websters. Haven’t had time to touch them yet. Welborn called from Texas with Wanda’s married names — total of five. Haven’t had time for them, yet, either. If all that doesn’t pay, we’re back to where we started.”

“Then where the hell is he, Johnny? You run through the state files, DMV, tax rolls, voter regis—”

“—I just told you, boss.”

Creeps who go off the grid are tough. You’d be surprised how many people aren’t who you think they are. You don’t know who you’re looking for, and all the standard locators don’t work. I was quiet a second as the frustration built. But, as with most frustration, there was nowhere for it to go. “What about subcontractors and custodial people for Bright Tomorrows and—”

“—Dawn Christie helped, but Marcine Browne won’t even talk to me.”

“How could she resist you, Johnny?”

Escobedo leaned in close. I saw the quick anger in his eyes. “Because she didn’t resist you, man. She got her pretty face fired for talking with you. Her boss gets back from St. John or someplace and one of her assistants tells him she’s been talking to you about members. Rats her out completely. Guess who the new manager is now? I talked to one of their legal department. They’re not releasing shit to us without a subpoena or a warrant. Period. They’re just not talking, man. Of course I got Marcine’s home number and tried that. She hung up.”

It hit me hard that I’d gotten a helpful young woman fired. I added that to the frustration, too. Johnny could see the look on my face and he knew what it meant. A pissed-off Irishman and a pissed-off Mexican boil down to about the same thing.

“Then get the warrant,” I said.

“We’re working on it.”

I sighed and sat back. It was either that or throw a chair through the plate-glass window. Or throw myself. “What about the female-owned houses?”

Johnny sat forward, speaking quietly: “Look, boss. We’re way past this FBI profile. Forget the houses and guest houses and listings. Forget all the names we don’t have for this guy. He’s off the grid — a lot of people are off it. But we’ve got a good composite out of Brittany Elder and we need to work it the best we can. There might be something at Bright Tomorrows, but that’s going to take a little time. I’ve requested a subpoena but the judges are busy. It’s the usual stuff, Terry. Hours. Days. Time.”

“No. There’s the women. The women who listed houses with guest quarters. He could have a wife, a sister, you never know who holds the paper on a place and who really lives there.”

Now he sat back, shaking his head sadly. “Ishmael nixed that this morning. I agreed.”

What can you say when your unit revolts against you? “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, all fake bravura.

The words must have sounded stupidly brave to Johnny, because he arched his dark brows and stared hard at me again. But for all his cool and street smarts, Johnny’s as straight as a cop can be. I could almost read his thoughts: you start prowling around as a charged felon repping yourself as a cop and you’re going to take a long hard fall. I can’t help you there. I’m taking a chance on you, man.

“All right, Johnny,” I said. “Thank you. Thanks for helping me. I mean that.”

Then he looked at me with undisguised regret. I knew it wasn’t giving me information that he regretted, but the fact that I was still working the case. That I was still there, getting in deeper, trying to make it mine while the County built its case against me for a morals rap. I saw myself as a little bit crazy in Johnny Escobedo’s eyes. He saw me tying a rope around my own neck, but he still had a job to do. He was the system and I wasn’t. I was pure poison.

“This is for you, John — The Horridus has another handle. I. R. Shroud.”

“How do you know that?” he asked quietly, still askance at Terry Naughton, former head of CAY, former champion of the little people.

I took a napkin out of the plastic holder and the pen out of my pocket. I wrote:

HORRIDUS = I. R. SHROUD

He looked at the words for a long moment. “It’s an anagram. Same letters. I’ll be damned. But where’d you get the name?”